"I raise, therefore I am." - Howard Lederer

[TStoneMBD]

can someone tell me what this means?

[a500lbgorilla]

Howard Lederer was trying to be poetic but just ended up being moronic(?)

-'rilla

[bholdr]

the original phrase is "cogito ergo sum" i think therefore i am. maybe he's trying to draw a paralell betewwn thinking players and aggressive players, and trying too hard to sound smart while he's doing it.

[a500lbgorilla]

Maybe a vague parralel between the two but you can draw no meaning from it without heavy bullshiting.

-'rilla

[PokerMike]

Its a Descartes quote.

[klagett]

[ QUOTE ]
trying too hard to sound smart while he's doing it

[/ QUOTE ]

Agrd with this

[Typical_Cat]

The original quote "I think, therefore I am" is the thinking man's way of distinguishing himself from your average citizen, the mindless zombie.

"I raise, therefore I am" distinguishes Lederer and other aggressive poker players from the average player pool. Plus, just as "thinking" or intellect or enlightenment or whatever you want to call it was the most important part of Descartes' life, "raising" or just playing poker is the most important part of Lederer's life.

Or something like that.

[burningyen]

[ QUOTE ]
...just as "thinking" or intellect or enlightenment or whatever you want to call it was the most important part of Descartes' life...

[/ QUOTE ]

IIRC, it was a line from his proof of the existence of God.

[TStoneMBD]

[ QUOTE ]
The original quote "I think, therefore I am" is the thinking man's way of distinguishing himself from your average citizen, the mindless zombie.

"I raise, therefore I am" distinguishes Lederer and other aggressive poker players from the average player pool. Plus, just as "thinking" or intellect or enlightenment or whatever you want to call it was the most important part of Descartes' life, "raising" or just playing poker is the most important part of Lederer's life.

Or something like that.

[/ QUOTE ]

thanks i think this is the one i was looking for.

[a500lbgorilla]

[ QUOTE ]
The original quote "I think, therefore I am" is the thinking man's way of distinguishing himself from your average citizen, the mindless zombie.


[/ QUOTE ]

I don't think it's a quote to distinguish himself from normal people.

[ QUOTE ]
The argument that is usually summarized as "cogito ergo sum" appears first in Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy, where he attempts to build an entire philosophical system with no prior assumptions. He reasons that since all his beliefs have been derived from potentially misleading sense data or potentially fallacious logic, he can trust nothing that he has hitherto taken to be true. That is to say, he decides to systematically doubt all that could conceivably be doubted. He discovers the one thing that he cannot doubt is his own existence. After all, he claims, something nonexistent is incapable even of the act of doubting. Thus the formulation, "I think, therefore I am", was the starting point of his philosophy.

[/ QUOTE ]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cogito_ergo_sum

-'rilla

[a500lbgorilla]

Like I said, without heavy bullshitting, it's just Lederer trying to be poetic but failing.

-'rilla

[K C]

Actually, the quote from Descartes is "I think, I am." So it really should be "I raise, I am." Only that would have made him sound even more stupid /images/graemlins/smile.gif

KC
kingcobrapoker.com

[timmer]

[ QUOTE ]
the original phrase is "cogito ergo sum" i think therefore i am. maybe he's trying to draw a paralell betewwn thinking players and aggressive players, and trying too hard to sound smart while he's doing it.

[/ QUOTE ]

Stercus accidit - [censored] happens /images/graemlins/smirk.gif

timmer

[Richard Tanner]

ergo is latin for "therefore", so unless the latin quote is wrong he didn't say "I think, I am".

Cody

[TStoneMBD]

ty for the url. from my understanding Descartes is not at all trying to distinguish himself from the normal morons, instead he is trying to prove his exhistence through his own capability of cognitive thinking. i believe the term is introspection. Descartes tries to believe that his life had started over with amnesia and to simplify, was isolated in a black room and had know knowledge that the world exhists or that there would be anything outside this isolated room. he then goes on to try and prove his exhistence merely on the fact that he can think, and the intentions of his philosophy are derived from his quote, "i think, therefore i am." he uses the term "i think" as a substitute for the word "i exhist."

if that is the case, then "i raise, therefore i am" should imply that "i raise" is a substitute for the word "i exhist," which would also imply that lederer defines his exhistence through his raises. its all pretty mundane if you ask me, maybe i simply dont understand the compexities of the Descartes. i understand what he was trying to accomplish, but simply dont find it interesting.

[djhoneybear]

Have you ever thought to yourself that life is one long dream and that nothing really exists? Descartes was attempting to show that existance isn't merely prooved by the sense as the senses can be fooled. His starting point for this proof was the realization that even without senses, the ability to think necessitates that one exist. Hence the expression "I think there for I am". Its a catchy phrase but a better translation of the french would be "I have thoughts, therefore I exist".

As for the Lederer quote I think it is much simpler than you are making it. A poker player carves himself a nitch by playing agressively. Raising is the way to express this agression in poker and prevents other sharks from swallowing you hole or the blinds shaving you down to nothing. If you want to increase your chips the only way to do this is to raise. A poker player exists because he bets. A weak player doesn't like to bet anything but the nuts and won't raise with a second best hand. Ironically they will never finish better than second best.

[MrFeelNothin]

philosophy of MrFeelNothin: Coito, ergo sum.

[TStoneMBD]

intercourse, therefore i am? G1

[PokerMike]

No, he is right. If you look up Descartes' Meditations its all there. I was going to point it out but thought it'd be a little anal /images/graemlins/tongue.gif

Pleasantly suprised to see philosophy discussed on a poker forum though. Descartes wants to see what can be put into doubt, so he goes overboard and takes the most skeptically possible position about everything, and then tries prove something which cannot be doubted. He actually goes all the way to talking about a malicious demon that would deceive all your senses(cos its possible in principle - a la matrix) so that you could not know anything for sure, other than 'I think, I exist'.

[Dawdy]

This can be read on several levels.
1) raising and so giving evidence to the rest of the players that you are at the table! Obviously you are at the table, you dont need to make raises to prove that.
2) From Descartes "he attempts to build an entire philosophical system with no prior assumptions. He reasons that since all his beliefs have been derived from potentially misleading sense data or potentially fallacious logic, he can trust nothing that he has hitherto taken to be true."
Several interpretations are open here... play your own cards not what you assume others could have as everyone else is an actor on a stage. Or leading on from his Zen article, live in the moment, nothing else exists.

I am torn between the latter two meanings myself.
The guy thinks alot about poker. Give him enough credit to not misquote for the hell of it.
I agree with him in as much as .. and here we start laying it on thick! A poker table is a pool of water, each player makes a ripple on the pond. We control our own ripples and have to be able to interpret others. Because we 'control' our own ripples others not only do the same but they can read your messages and you thiers. By recognising that our presence at a table affects the table we should be able to control the table by sending out the right messages at the right times.

Dawdy

[Cyrus]

Simply put.

[axioma]

jesus so much BS in this thread.

why do people feel the need to comment on things they obviously have no comprehension of?

[jack spade23]

All this is is Lederer making fun of players who raise mindlessly and are too aggresive. He is saying that they think "I need to make myself a better player so I will raise) Its sarcasm

[QuikSand]

I read it as:

Descartes wanted to say that the act of thinking is itself proof of existence. In an epistemological argument, defining existsnce is a tough thing to do -- Descartes's argument is basically that "if I didn't exist, I wouldn't be capable of doing something so profound as generating these thoughts." Sounds simple, but it caught on -- more than many other Latin phrases, for certain.

Lederer is taking this approach to epistemology and saying that if Descartes needed to find something profound about existence to verify itself (just breathing wasn't enough, it took thinking to be self-demonstrating) -- then we must find something equally profound in poker as an analogy. Essentially, he's saying that (using "raising" as a euphemism for solid, aggressive play):

--breathing is to thinking as calling is to raising--


Probably just the sort of bullshit that you've already been warned about earlier in the thread.